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Tower of Babel Painting

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Submitted By mwatson221
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My art selection is The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel. The Tower of Babel is a Renaissance painting created with oil on an oak panel in 1563. Bruegal was considered the greatest Flemish Renaissance painter of the 16th century. He actually painted The Tower three times. The first painting was smaller and is now lost. The second painting was created on a panel in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The third painting was a bit smaller and is now in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningon in Rotterdam.
Bruegel was born in 1525 in the Duchy of Brabant and moved to Antwerp in 1542 to become an artist’s apprentice. He visited Rome from 1552-1554. He traveled through the Alps which may have inspired his landscaped style of painting. After working in Antwerp for 10 years he moved to Brussels in 1563 and died in 1569. Bruegal has about 45 paintings that have survived, of which one third of are at Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
The Tower of Babel painting is beautiful with all its detail. The background is sky blue with fluffy white clouds. In the distance are green grassy plains with a few small hills. To the left is a small town full of houses of all shapes and sizes. To the right is a body of water with many different types of watercraft. To the front is a king leading his people. The king has a few citizens bowing to him, but all others are working hard on the construction of the tower. Bruegel has painted many trades of skill working along the tower. He has stonemasons, carpenters, plasterers, bricklayers, mortar mixers, and tinsmiths hard at work. By closer inspection, Bruegal has even added some humor to his art by showing the worker’s laundry hanging out to dry.
The Tower of Babel painting tells a story from the bible, Genesis 11:1-9. According to Genesis 11, all humans spoke the same language following the flood of Noah. They were known as the Babylonians. They began to build a tower that would reach the heavens. God found out and was not pleased. He mixed the language of the Babylonians so they couldn’t understand one another. They were no longer able to communicate and they scattered about the world.
This is a great way to explain how it’s possible to have such a diverse population with so many languages. Chinese and English are nothing alike; we have letters while they have symbols. I can’t think of an explanation for this with the “theory of evolution”.
Bruegal’s statement in The Tower of Babel painting is a display of vanity and bold attempt for worship in arrogance. The tower is quite large in comparison to its surroundings. The town to the left looks shrunken. The ships in the water to the right look like small boats.
I chose this painting because I thought the massive tower was beautiful. The tower looks like a masterpiece in construction. It’s very mysterious, I would like to explore throughout the tower. Unfortunately it was constructed very long ago and has deteriorated over time. The tower was constructed in the city of Babylon in Iraq. There is an aerial photograph displayed in the British Museum that was taken in 1973. It shows a dark square mark of the tower’s foundations, and the staircase that ascended it.
The Tower of Babel’s story is very interesting. At first I only noticed the beauty of the painting and as I learned the story I came to appreciate it more. The architecture and small details displayed in the painting bring the story to life. The Tower of Babel was to be a place of worship that would reach to the heavens. It’s a grand gesture to build one’s place of worship so much larger than one’s town. It was a generous idea until the people thought they should be able to speak to God in person, that’s when it became a display of arrogance.
My selection communicates with human emotions with the great size of the tower. The size of the tower shows arrogance and false pride. The tower is a great piece of architecture that will never be completed because the town’s people set their sights too high.
My appreciation of art has grown with this painting. I used to think that art was what someone put on canvas or carved by what they saw or envisioned. Now I realize that art can be much more. Over history art has brought us a tale of what “once was”. It wasn’t long ago that a story had to be told with a painting. The need for an artist years ago was only paid by the rich, but without them we would be unable to accurately picture history. Today with the use of cameras and video, art has less of a challenge to document history.
References:
http://occmed.oxfordjournals.org http://www.theguardian.com http://www.wga.hu http://blogs.artinfo.com http://www.ibiblio.org http://www.jstor.org http://www.artbible.info http://www.montgomerycollege.edu http://boiteaoutils.blogspot.com http://suite101.com/a/the_tower_of_babel-a10970 http://www.theartofpainting.beAOT-Babel.htm
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com

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